MacBook Neo’s SSD is shockingly slow — roughly one‑eighth the speed of the top MacBook Pro

The finding

It has been reported that IT Home (IT之家) cited a blog post from The Verge showing Apple (苹果)’s cheapest laptop, the MacBook Neo, uses an unusually slow solid‑state drive (SSD). Reportedly the MacBook Neo (A18 Pro/256GB) achieved sequential read/write speeds of about 1,735 MB/s and 1,684 MB/s. By contrast, new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models with Apple silicon hit far higher figures: MacBook Air (M5/1TB) ~7,049–7,480 MB/s and the top MacBook Pro (M5 Max/4TB) reached roughly 13.6 GB/s read and 17.8 GB/s write in the same tests.

Real‑world impact

Slower SSDs are not just a benchmark curiosity. Transfer times balloon: moving a 100 GB file would reportedly take about one minute on the MacBook Neo versus roughly 30 seconds on an M5 MacBook Air and only 7–8 seconds on the M5 Max MacBook Pro. Because macOS will use SSD space for virtual memory once physical RAM is exhausted, a markedly slower drive can also slow app launches and swap‑heavy workflows, especially on systems with modest RAM.

Why it matters

Is this a deliberate product‑segmentation choice or a cost‑saving necessity? It has been reported that Apple may be balancing performance tiers to protect higher‑margin models, but analysts also point to broader supply‑chain and component‑cost pressures—factors amplified by global tech tensions between the U.S. and China—that can influence suppliers’ choices. For buyers, the takeaway is simple: look beyond price. Entry‑level Apple notebooks now carry compromises that materially affect day‑to‑day speed.